The Laptop Thread: Configs, deals & questions

This is a discussion on The Laptop Thread: Configs, deals & questions within Gadgets, Computers & Software, part of the Shifting gears category; No matter what laptop one buys, a SSD is perhaps the most critical component and affects the speed/performance of the ...

No matter what laptop one buys, a SSD is perhaps the most critical component and affects the speed/performance of the entire system. I for one would recommend perhaps going down on CPU etc, but not compromise on a SSD.

I bought a Dell laptop in 2011 which was quite advanced at the time (i7 2nd gen, FHD, etc). However, the entire system performance was compromised by a mechanical 7200 rpm hard disk. Finally in 2013, I removed the DVD tray, bought a Silverstone DVD enclosure for converting DVD tray to SATA hard disk, and installed an Intel 520 120 GB SSD. The performance difference has been amazing and nothing unexpected.

May sound little childish, but why not buy a model suitable to your requirement & budget and then just upgrade the HDD to one that spins @ 7200rpm?

The point is that the delivered laptop in Sep 2011 had a 7200 rpm Seagate Momentus. That was later replaced by a 1TB Seagate Hybrid (with around 16GB of SSD). The constraint in laptops is the hard disk slot (often one) and getting the laptop OEM to replace the hard disk with SSD is far more expensive.

There are 2 options to using SSD in laptops:
1. one hard disk slot: buying either a low capacity SSD and be crimped on storage or paying >25K for a 500GB SSD
2. converting DVD slot: buying a 120 GB roundabout SSD and a larger capacity (500-1000 GB) conventional 5400-7200 rpm hard disk.

If one is building a system, a conventional hard disk used as a boot disk is perhaps the biggest bottleneck on performance. There is no way that even a 10000 rpm Hard Disk can be in the same park as the slowest SSD.

Of course Vasudeva, I am in all agreement with you. However, my solution was for member 'alto99' who is looking for a laptop with a 7200 RPM HDD. I should have quoted him I guess to avoid the confusion!

This is a solution to the constraint of having 1 hard disk slot. In one disk, it has a 120GB SSD and 1 TB 5400 rpm hard disk.
However,
1 it is super-expensive ($290-300)
2. the SSD is mediocre in performance.

Regarding SSD vs HDD
Reason for not going for SSD is my experience with my existing laptop (dell precision m6500 which has a SSD and a 7200rpm HDD) and SSD experiences of colleagues with similar (dell precision or latitude) has been bad over past 3 years.
1. they are unreliable. In past 4 years my laptops' SSD has been changed 4 times (once every year) under warranty by Dell. Every time, although capacity and brand was same, the disk's build /model number were different which further questions their reliability.
2. My requirements involves considerable "write" operations on the disk. That itself (excessive writes) might have caused 1st issue but I cannot prove it (http://www.howtogeek.com/165472/6-th...-state-drives/). The performance of HDD or SSD has been similar for such operations. Startup time is non issue as I almost never shut-down but use hibernate.

Although Dell changed the disks under warranty, warranty comes at a huge cost and for my personal purchase I am not inclined in spending such amounts and would prefer a more reliable memory.

I am not disagreeing with the suggestion of SSD over HDD but for my usage SSDs have been unreliable. I have friends using laptops with SSDs for casual use and it has kept them happy.

About upgrading with a 7200 rpm HDD too we have a few unreliable experiences in our organization (still under investigation and I don't know details about it - again with a Dell laptop). So I don't want to take that risk from day one. Dell used to provide factory upgraded HDs in their "personal use" laptops but nowadays I don't find that option in their Inspiron series (which are more affordable than the business ones).

If I don't get a reasonable option I might as well ditch the idea of laptop and get a desktop with 15K rpm HDD if possible within same budget.

I am not disagreeing with the suggestion of SSD over HDD but for my usage SSDs have been unreliable. I have friends using laptops with SSDs for casual use and it has kept them happy.

Boot time improvement is not the only one advantage of SSD. As to unreliability, sorry to hear about that.
I have used SSD for 2 years now but have used only Intel and Samsung. They are reliable as are Crucial and Plextor. In fact more reliable and more long lasting than HDDs. Get a higher capacity one (>120 GB) one.

Hi midazolam,
For a small price difference, the non touch 14r gives you a haswell i5 cpu and an nvidia gt 740m 2gb graphics card. IMHO, the non touch version makes more sense than the i3 touch. A touchscreen is anyway a pain to use on a laptop, and the faster i5 and nvidia gpu is something you may actually use

Hi RonXRi94
You are spot on. I have finalized the exact same model. There is no point in having a touch screen in a laptop. It's a pain to use and impractical. Moreover as everything is now becoming touch, I wanted to keep this traditional

I have a Samsung RV509 laptop and I just performed a clean install of windows 7 home premium. Now the touch pad isn't working for multi-finger scrolling, etc so what program or driver do I need to install to enable it? I had something called "Multi-touch" earlier but I can't find it now. Couldn't find anything on the Samsung website too

I have a Dell Vostro V131 Laptop. Since last couple of days i am facing the issue of the FAN noise coming ON a lot. I have to literally shut down the laptop as i get scared thinking it will damage my Mother board or HDD. I called up the Dell customer care and they advised that the The Heat Sink and Fan will need to be replaced. They have quoted me INR 5000/- along with the engineer visit and replace Heat Sink and Fan will carry 3 months warranty.

Is it worth it? I am not too sure on going to a local computer guy for my Dell. Its my work laptop and I dont want to take any chances.

Now the touch pad isn't working for multi-finger scrolling, etc so what program or driver do I need to install to enable it? I had something called "Multi-touch" earlier but I can't find it now. Couldn't find anything on the Samsung website too